Circles
by Krillia
Summary: Ed contemplates on the full moon, the futility of his desires, and his first meeting with Heidrich, while under the gaze of an unknown observer. Parallel fanfiction to Deceptions. Spoilers for Heidrich and series episodes 44


Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist is copyright Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix, Studio Bones and, in America, Funimation. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this non-profit work of fan fiction. This is a work of noncommercial amateur fan fiction; it is not published for profit or material gain. The author and the posters have no intent to infringe any intellectual property rights held by the owners of existing copyrights in Fullmetal Alchemist or its derivative works. The author retains copyright to this work.

**Circles**

Ed was completely and utterly used to the feeling of being watched. It was the norm, in his life. Children watched him, stared, when he limped slightly, unused to the shift and pull of his prosthetic leg even after three years of wearing it. They truly gawked if his arm was uncovered, especially if he was wearing the simple model, rather than the jointed, pathetic facsimile of automail.

Adults watched him for very different reasons. They thought that, perhaps, he was just slightly crazy. The boy who had suffered some horrible accident and fabricated elaborate stories to cover up what had truly happened. His friends watched him to make sure that he wasn't going to go insane. He was truly used to being watched.

Despite that, though, as he went to take a seat across the coffee table from his roommate, Ed couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. Something more piercing than Heidrich's gaze was burning into his back, simultaneously making his skin crawl and something in the back of his mind jump with anticipation and a strange sense of familiarity.

Ed passed it off as wishful thinking. The full moon made people act weirdly was all. He often thought too much, unable to sleep under the bright magnetic power of the light. He was used to the sleepless nights as he lay under the blue-white beams, restless and trying to decide the next path he should venture onto in his life.

After all, there were infinite paths to take, in this world. People seemed to enjoy telling him that. People who…kept trying to disappear, eventually succeeding as they simply faded away from him. They said that he could continue on forever, because the world was constantly changing; totally different with each passing day.

The last made Ed laugh, bitterly. Generally not in the face of whoever was talking to him. He wasn't quite that rude anymore. It didn't do to be rude when people could throw you in a gutter and leave you there. There wouldn't even be a second glance. For a while, he'd held onto the belief that it might work, and then he realized that everyone used the lines that he meant so sincerely. _Everyone_ said "if I was five years younger", or "if we were someplace else". They just didn't have anything to back it up with. Ed had everything to back it up with. Or he would have, if the stories didn't sound like fiction to the people he was telling them to. Sometimes, Ed couldn't but help but think that they sounded rather ridiculous just in general.

Forcing himself to focus on the matter at hand, Ed bent over the papers and documents Heidrich had spread on the table, examining them curiously as his mind sorted through the complex symbols and formulas, alien and yet recognizable in their substance. It was a companionable ritual for them. Important to them, and yet comfortable in its familiarity. From time to time, Heidrich would talk, or point something out. Quiet, demure and wholly unobtrusive questions would also occasionally break the silence. Something in that tone made Ed's skin crawl, each time he heard it. Heidrich sometimes seemed to notice, and there would be a slightly hurt expression on his face when Ed paused, staring at him, before answering. Because Heidrich thought the stories were ridiculous, too. He tried to believe, which was more than could be said for other people, but he was a scientist and Ed could prove very little about his past.

So only Ed was left to know just how far from fiction his stories were. The thing that made him weak and supposedly useless in this world was a constant and very painful reminder to him exactly how real his world was. The differences that slammed into his mind, incongruous with all the knowledge he had of the world, of i his /i world. The similarities that made him remember, each day, everything that he had lost.

And Hoenheim. As much as he had hated the man who was his father, Ed had no reason to doubt anything he'd been told. Especially with the images and not-quite-images that the Gate had forced into his head. There was utter truth in both worlds. He had not the option of forcing one of the realities into the realm that was devoted to dreams and memories. Scars and nightmares and daydreams refused to let him go. Tangled webs of memories and realities. The ghosts of his past were reaffirmed daily by the reality of his present, and the present was slammed harshly into his face each day by those who seemed as though they should be ghosts of his past.

The ghosts made it all the more painful when they smiled, and nodded, and laughed. They didn't believe him, of course. They thought he was a fine storyteller, and the one person who did know the stories were true has disappeared. Ed wasn't quite sure whether it was he or Hoenheim that had run away first, but it had been over a year since he had last seen the man who he now grudgingly referred to as his father. Some time after he'd found Heidrich. Run into him, actually. Not because he hadn't seen him but because he had. It would have been fine if they'd both been inside. The differences would have been obvious. But the engineer had already been outside, during their first meeting. On his hands and knees digging in the dirt for a fallen screw, his back to the door that Edward had just walked out of.

If it hadn't been for the sun Ed might have never seen it. He might have walked by and never seen the ghost. But his vision had been washed out by the transition from inside to out, his pupils not yet contracted to the proper diameter to filter the light properly. Slightly in the shadows, Heidrich had been darker, even smaller than he actually was. A ghost made flesh, reality. A dream that wasn't a dream kneeling before him. He'd been next to the other one before he remembered that it wasn't possible. That, with all that he'd been told and learned over the past months, that the blond was nothing more than a convincing doppelganger.

The light had faded, both the hope and the physical, in the exact moment the blond on the ground had looked up, eyes friendly, but baffled, as they regarded Ed; regarded the boy who had just called his name, or part of it, in an odd, completely unrecognizable, accent.

And that was how they had met, at least. Under a false pretense that had been confounded by the sun. Heidrich seemed to have, ultimately, forgiven him. Ed counted the sickly, determined boy, so like his brother and yet so completely different, as a true friend. He held onto Heidrich as tightly as he could. He was the bridge, the only thing keeping him from being completely alone in this world where he couldn't do anything. Couldn't even get the answer to the only question he'd ever wanted answered, the only thing he'd ever wanted since he was a child. The cost for the possibility that he had saved his brother was that he would never know if he had succeeded in doing so.

The price for his brother's freedom had been his imprisonment in a world of ghosts. Where nothing was as it should be and everything was as it was, and where people looked at him in fascinated pity.

A world where he felt the weight of his memories staring at him through dark, unattended windows in the shadows cast by a full moon.

Ed kind of wished people would stop telling him there were so many roads he could take. From what he could tell, each and every one of them led in a circle. Back to a point where nothing could go forward because, quite frankly, he wasn't sure which direction forward was.

There was nothing powerful or even useful about a circle. In this world, circles didn't lead to anything, or led only back to the ghosts and the unwanted, unavoidable gazes.

Fin

A/N

This is part of a series, which I have started to call Willful Deceptions. It starts with the Envy-centric fic, "Deceptions", and will eventually become EnvyxEd in nature. I am posting the fics individually because I am unsure of the final rating of the series. However, I posted Deceptions, and am posting this, because I feel that both fics stand fine on their own.


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